1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus for producing a three-dimensional structure, a method of producing a three-dimensional structure, and a three-dimensional structure.
2. Related Art
A technique of forming a three-dimensional structure by forming material layers (unit layers) on a stage (forming table) using a composition (forming material) that contains powder (grains) and laminating them to each other is known (for example, see JP-A-2001-150556). In this technique, a three-dimensional structure is formed by repeatedly performing the following operation. First, a material layer is formed by thinly spreading powder to have a uniform thickness and a bonding unit is formed by selectively bonding powder to each other in only a desired portion of the material layer. As a result, a thin plate-like member (hereinafter, referred to as a “cross-sectional member”) is formed in the bonding unit in which powder is bonded to each other. Next, another material layer is thinly formed on the material layer and a bonding unit is formed by selectively bonding powder to each other in only a desired portion of the material layer. As a result, a new cross-sectional member is formed on a newly formed material layer. At this time, the newly formed cross-sectional member is bonded to the cross-sectional member formed earlier. A three-dimensional structure can be formed by laminating thin plate-like cross-section members (bonding units) to each other one by one by repeatedly performing such an operation.
In such a technique, a three-dimensional structure is formed by temporarily supplying a composition (forming material) to a supply table which is different from the forming area, moving the composition onto the forming area (work surface), and forming layers in the entire forming area. However, since the area of the layer to be formed (area when seen in a plan view) is constant regardless of the kind of three-dimensional structure to be produced, there is a problem in that there are many compositions which are not be practically used to produce a three-dimensional structure.